County contract with Arts Council on chopping block amid tough budget year; MAH funding cuts also proposed

Santa Cruz County staff are proposing to cut a $170,000 contract with Arts Council Santa Cruz County and reduce funding for the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History to patch a budget hole in the parks department.

The sudden cuts come after the county’s board of supervisors rejected a controversial plan to charge for parking at popular local parks, forcing staff to find alternative ways to save money.

Staff had estimated the pay-to-park pilot program would bring in nearly $260,000 a year to support park maintenance and management. County parks staff had also proposed reducing maintenance at parks and additional park staffing, closing Simpkins Family Swim Center in Live Oak on Sundays for nine months of the year, and eliminating free programming to help cut costs in a tough budget year. 

However, supervisors tasked the parks department to come back this Wednesday with an alternative budget proposal. And they responded with the proposal to cut the Arts Council’s contract and reduce funding for the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. 

The county’s parks department oversees arts funding and programming as part of its goal “to provide safe, well-designed and maintained parks, and a wide variety of recreational and cultural opportunities” for the community.   

In March, the county projected a $23.2 million budget deficit for the 2026-27 fiscal year, and a long-term structural deficit that could exceed $67 million by 2028-29 in the absence of mitigating actions. The county implemented travel and hiring restrictions and asked that departments look for ways to balance their budgets. 

County Executive Officer Nicole Coburn said the county will need to pull nearly $43 million in combined one-time funding from its general fund reserves and departmental trust funds to help avoid employee layoffs and keep safety-net services that are provided by the county, such as health and social services. 

The proposal to cut the $170,000 arts contract came as a surprise to Jim Brown, Arts Council executive director. He told Lookout that he found out about the proposal only last Thursday, less than a week before it was scheduled to come before the board of supervisors. 

“It was a complete surprise,” he said. “The last time I heard anything about county funding for the Arts Council was at an arts commission hearing in early May.” 

Brown added that he was told at the time that the contract would be fully funded, but that it could be reduced because of the county’s ongoing budget challenges. In the past, the contract amount has been reduced, but never cut completely.

Cutting the Arts Council contract is meant to help with closing a $590,000 budget gap created by dropping the idea to create the pay-to-park pilot program, restoring seven-day operations at Simpkins Family Swim Center and restoring extra staff and maintenance, according to a county staff report. 

Staff have also recommended reducing software programming costs and using Measure K funding to help maintenance of county parks to fill in the funding gap. 

Brown said the $170,046 arts contract covers about two-thirds of the Arts Council’s granting budget. On average, it gives away nearly $220,000 every year in grant money to arts organizations and individuals across the county, which includes Pajaro Valley Arts, Senderos and the Santa Cruz Art League.

List of arts organizations and individual artists receiving funding from Arts Council Santa Cruz County

The other third goes into managing exhibits at the county’s Ocean Street government building and the Arts Council’s general operations, which support its arts education programs, the annual Open Studios art tour and other work, Brown said. 

“There’s a lot of arts organizations in Santa Cruz County that are very small, with budgets under $100,000, certainly under $200,000,” Brown said. “For many of them, Arts Council support is their only grant funding.” 

While many of these organizations also get donations from individuals and earn revenue from ticket sales or events, cutting the contract would still leave a significant hit to many of them, he said.

“It’s not just about the Arts Council because it impacts all the organizations and artists that we fund,” Brown said. 

Miriam Anton, executive director of Pajaro Valley Arts in Watsonville, told Lookout that the proposal from county staff feels “like a sucker punch to the gut.” Funding for the arts is already so tenuous, she said, and to see more money “stripped away” is devastating. 

Pajaro Valley Arts organizes exhibits and workshops year-round that highlight local artists of all mediums in South County. Anton said the money the organization receives from the Arts Council every year helps support its operations and staff, who are primarily part-time. 

“That’s the fund that we’re always looking to increase, not decrease,” she said. 

Pajaro Valley Arts receives funding from individual donors, the City of Watsonville — which just earned a prestigious cultural district designation — grants and through art sales at its exhibits and memberships, said Anton. 

The Arts Council also awards professional development grants each year, awarding individual artists up to $1,000 to host activities that improve artistic skills or expand business and professional capacity. 

Jessica Carrasco, who used to lead the youth art programs for Arte Del Corazón, was a recipient of a $700 professional development grant this year. In the past, she has used grant money to buy a laptop and an iPad so she could grow her business and more seriously pursue art. She has also helped students over the years apply for grants to support their burgeoning art careers. 

For many artists in South County, she said, having funding from grants determines whether they’re able to host an event or buy art supplies, especially since many of them have full-time jobs that are not related to art to make a living.

“People don’t realize that not only is there not a lot of opportunities for South County artists here in Watsonville, we don’t have an art store, we don’t have a music store, we don’t have a bookstore,” Carrasco said. “To be able to buy supplies or buy big stuff for us, it’s a lot harder. So those grants were really, really helpful for a lot of artists here.”

Carrasco used around $200 of her grant funding to apply to be an artist at Watsonville’s Open Studios, she said, which is a free, annual self-guided art tour presented by the Arts Council. She is planning to use the rest of her money to pay for art supplies and snacks for the Open Studios event this fall, because it is not as highly attended in South County as it is in northern Santa Cruz County. 

“What I was trying to do is use some of that money to bring people and to advertise the event here in Watsonville,” she said. “And when you want to have a good successful event, you gotta bring them in with food. So that’s where I was going with that money.”

In addition to the Arts Council’s contract being cut, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History’s contract with the county is facing a nearly 50% reduction, according to Executive Director Ginger Shulick Porcella. 

Porcella told Lookout that the MAH has been receiving roughly $154,000 from the county each year. The funding helps cover the cost of maintaining the county’s historical archives, staffing and programming at Evergreen Cemetery and the Davenport Jail, which includes history tours, general maintenance and its Día de los Muertos festival, she said. 

“This would be like the least amount we’ve ever received from the county ever, since the museum started,” she said. 

If the proposed cuts are approved, the MAH would receive nearly $77,297 from the county. Porcella added that the museum just passed its budget for the next fiscal year, which starts on July 1. 

“I’m literally sitting here retooling next year’s budget, trying to figure out how to cut $80,000 out of a pretty lean budget,” Porcella said. “Because there’s no federal funding anymore, there’s no state funding, and now there’s no local funding.” 

It’s sad to see that a community like Santa Cruz that prides itself as an “artsy, creative, intellectually curious place” is not putting its money behind those things, Porcella said. 

“It asks our community, what are these things that we value? Do we believe that access to arts and culture is important?” Porcella said. “I believe so. I believe it’s worth fighting for.” 

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